NTHE Question #12

August 29, 2014

Would you kill yourself in order to help other people survive, even though that survival was highly unlikely, or would you choose to stay alive no matter what, even if that meant killing someone else and watching those you love perish in front of you?

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Comments 88

No, I would not kill myself in order to help others survive. I dont have a martyr complex. However, if I was not able to contribute in any meaningful way to survival of a “group” due to incapacity, I would expect circumstances would dictate that I would be “left behind” so to speak.
As for killing somebody else, I dont know and hope I wont have to find out. I cant see how it can be answered until one finds oneself in such circumstances that it may prove necessary. As for “watching those you love perish in front of you”, it seems a pointless qualification as I cant imagine any sane person standing idly by whilst this was happening.

Unknowable until your in that situation. It’s like suicide vs prepping. Some people, like concrete dome advocates, might simply feel overwhelmed and hopeless when it all falls apart and they realize (not imagine) what is involved in surviving. Then there are those who already have a little by by kit at the ready for when the moment comes, but might be overwhelmed by their inherent survival instinct. Unknowable.

Being a teenager in New Zealand is more dangerous than in most other developed countries, a new study has shown.

Kiwi teens are more likely to die young in car crashes or by suicide than in almost every other developed, high-income country, with New Zealand’s overall adolescent death rate second only to the United States.

In a four-part series co-written by Professor George Patton, of Melbourne University, the medical journal The Lancet has published an analysis of the biggest health risks to young people aged 10 to 24 globally.

Though statistics published this week show youth suicides in New Zealand had dropped by more than a third since 1995, the country still had the highest male suicide rate among 27 countries analysed.

Among young women, the suicide rate was the fifth highest.

A league table of road deaths – the single-biggest killer of young people worldwide – showed only the US had more young women die on the road, and road deaths among young men in New Zealand were the fourth highest behind the US, Greece and Portugal.

The US had the highest overall mortality rate, because of its high rate of violent deaths and deaths due to road trauma.

Otago University’s Professor David Fergusson, from the department of psychological medicine, said the reasons were not fully understood, but the high rate of vehicle accidents could reflect New Zealand’s young driving age of 16.

The New Zealand Transport Agency tightened the practical-driving-test regime this year.

The reasons for higher youth suicide rates were largely unknown, but could be alcohol-related, Prof Fergusson said.

“What distinguishes some of the countries with high youth-suicide rate [New Zealand, Finland, Ireland] is that these are all small liberal democracies with high rates of alcohol consumption.”

The authors said the world’s 1.8billion adolescents faced more challenges than past generations, with more exposure to alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases and problems from social media.

While the explosion in social media such as Facebook and Twitter had good points, it also gave rise to issues such as online bullying and “sexting”, or sending explicit images by mobile phone.

The best ways for countries to improve adolescent health were by improving access to education and employment, and reducing risk of transport-related injury.

Robin
We can’t be too hard on Chelsea, she has a lot of necessary expenses. I mean just her make up bill alone is humongous . You see that face, it’s like 40-grit sandpaper. Quite costly smoothing that over everyday. Poor thing.

Yeah, I generally am more likely to than not (give up my life). i already feel I kill myself for the sake of others, since I feel I’ve largely accomplished what I’ve wanted to in life and am ready to die any day. The reason I live is partly for myself and mostly for others (it’s circular, since making the others happy is important to me, and so I live to make them happy, and therefore I’m happy, ad infinitum).

What is wrong with this website? Why so many derogatory remarks! We know Chelsea is waaaaaay over paid but, you do not have to trash her appearance. All know she is no beauty like all the other celebs. Please stop! It is NOT funny. It isn’t her fault. She hasn’t done anything to anyone that I know of, except to be born with a spoon in her mouth.

Maybe teh evolution of the human-oid wasn`t meant to stay in the 3 dimensional time space continuum there are other ways of being hence the current crizis . we should maybe welcome it instead of being disturbed by it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvy685RtqoE

We must remember these questions here at NBL are targeted towards an extremely limited audience. If you are even reading this blog, you’re already way out on the fringe compared to the vastly distracted dominant culture, who are going to be completely blindsided by the sequence of catastrophic events.

It’s not much of a mystery as to how virtually everyone might perish within one generation, which is also what this question basically alludes to. If we’re lucky, most everyone will have the option of starving to death, if they don’t take their own life first. In fact, death by starvation might be considered a luxury, because that means you weren’t either rounded up and killed for god knows what psychotic reason TPTB concoct, or you weren’t a victim of some kind of genocidal war, or nuclear fallout, bio-agents or your starving neighbors. All things considered, death by starvation will most likely be the best of all possible outcomes where it concerns NTE, other than suicide for those who aren’t responsible for the welfare of others, and where the ethics of killing then comes into play.

So this question really only speaks to a particular scenario where it can even be applied, which is where there is only a limited amount of food to go around, once the global distribution of goods and services grinds to a halt, and where continuing to consume what little remains, means someone else has less to eat.

So let’s reframe the question into more relevant terms: If we are older, and are not able to directly provide for either ourselves or others, does it become ethical to kill ourselves, so that others might have more to eat, if but only for awhile longer?

Answer: Absolutely! Especially if “those others” are younger family members.

There are numerous native cultures who acted accordingly during times of scarcity, where once their older members were either unable to contribute in any meaningful way, or were unable to seasonally migrate, they either choose to stay behind, or just wandered off and sacrificed themselves to the elements. During times of abundance, native cultures could afford to allow their elderly to pass away gracefully, but during times of scarcity, it was common for the elderly to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their progeny.

In my opinion, this might be one of the last noble acts we humans can impart on our collective way out the door.

Living in fear of death is a waste of life, start thinking about how you are going to embrace death for whenever that moment does present itself, so you can be a positive example to those who are going to be right behind you.

In other words, don’t go out kicking and screaming, know when your time is up, and be humble, generous and courageous in how you exit this life.

‘If we are older, and are not able to directly provide for either ourselves or others, does it become ethical to kill ourselves, so that others might have more to eat, if but only for awhile longer?

Answer: Absolutely! Especially if “those others” are younger family members.’

This answer is nonsense in a NTHE scenario. If everyone is doomed to die of starvation, overheating or whatever, why prolong the agony for other, younger people by allowing them to have more food in the short term? Why not share whatever is available at the time and all die of starvation together?

That is one reason I am sick of the NTHE questions. There is no point in even thinking about any of it if NTHE is certain. Become a monk, stop eating meat, eat only meat, fornicate as much as possible, avoid walking on ants, burn down forests, give away all your possessions, steal, learn first-aid skills, murder people, blow up buildings, start wars, end wars, conserve, consume …. none of it is going to make a scrap of difference if NTHE is real and as close as some suggest.

Since practically everyone alive today has been living in aberrant times under aberrant economic-social conditions all their lives, who knows how they will respond when the aberrant times come to an end and geochemical-geophysical forces follow their natural path and gradually render much or all of the world uninhabitable?

“start thinking about how you are going to embrace death for whenever that moment does present itself”

Voluntary withdrawal from all cognition including all sensory inputs if experienced even once, obviates all thinking and thinking about. It is also quite different from general anaesthesia: I have been through both. Even when brief, its faintest glimpse ends all fear of the cessation of individual existence:

Lo! The sun is not, nor the comely moon,
All light extinct; in the great void of space
Floats shadow-like the image-universe.

In the void of mind involute, there floats
The fleeting universe, rises and floats,
Sinks again, ceaseless, in the current “I”.

Slowly, slowly, the shadow-multitude
Entered the primal womb, and flowed ceaseless,
The only current, the “I am”, “I am”.

@Kevin: That is one reason I am sick of the NTHE questions. There is no point in even thinking about any of it if NTHE is certain. Become a monk, stop eating meat, eat only meat, fornicate as much as possible, avoid walking on ants, burn down forests, give away all your possessions, steal, learn first-aid skills, murder people, blow up buildings, start wars, end wars, conserve, consume …. none of it is going to make a scrap of difference if NTHE is real and as close as some suggest.

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That’s true…if consciousness is merely a quirky byproduct of brain function, as any materialist believes.

OTOH, if consciousness precedes, survives and ultimately transcends our individual brain functioning, than perhaps the choices people make have some longer term consequences whether or not NTHE is on the menu.

These questions are getting a little contrived. Loaded? I will go with Huey Newton “My fear is no t of death itself, but a d eath without meaning.” If I could be guaranteed that the carbon burning would stop, that capitalism would die, that responsible parties would face capital punishment by 1000 cuts, that all the food animals would be set free, that nonhumans would receive equal consideration and rights, that rewilding would take precedence over all and that most of the world would look like North America pre-Columbus holocaust, then yeah, kill me. Absent that, i’m sticking around to make everyone’s life miserable.

Let’s put it this way: It seems to me that you have successfully hijacked the NBL website.

As you will know if you have been following, I wrote about ‘death of the plane’ as a consequence of the globalised consumer society and carbon dioxide poisoning 15 years ago, (not that I am making any claim for fame for that, since others suggested it long before me) and have been highlighting the prospect of anthropogenically-induced abrupt climate change since 2006. It has only ever been a question of timing and degree, and whether or not Gaia has some kind of as-yet-undiscovered mechanism for preventing catastrophic warming.

As well you know, I have been highlighting the failure of UNIPCC and governments around the world to tell the truth or address any of the issues. That said, I am not sure that your statement: ‘the only blog dedicated to NTE’ is correct. Only Guy can answer that.

But as far as I am concerned, NBL is dedicated to presentation of scientific evidence and discussion of the implications of the evidence. (Or it was). And I think I am correct in saying that Guy uses the term ‘likely’, rather than ‘absolutely certainly’.

I believe I correctly state the sentiments of many when I say there has been too much focus on ‘hospice’ over the past year and silly questions over recent weeks. Indeed, I did suggest around a year ago that the discussion had gone too far too fast in that direction.

Now it may be that people living in the US are experiencing much faster environmental and social meltdown than others around the world, and that may be warping the thinking of Americans. I do not know the answer to that since I am not there, and leave it to those who are living in America to comment.

As well you know, I am not a proponent of ‘technical fixes’, survival domes, ‘alternative energy systems’, ‘lifeboats’ to other planets, salvation via trans-dimensional transport, redemption though forgiveness etc., but would like to see more balanced discussion than we have been getting lately.

Somewhat related to this, and your comment about the state of affairs in America – anyone who follows the news worldwide may feel a sense of trepidation, given the situation in Ukraine and the ME, etc. Obama had a response to this, saying that the world is always messy and we’re just more hyperconnected and hyperinformed, so therefore this is just some overstimulation of the flight or fight response. But in general I think the average person is just worried about putting food on the table, having a roof over their heads, taking care of their family, etc. People are too concerned with money.

As someone who grew up in a corrupt society where money and influence mattered, and my family used that to its advantage, the US represented a change initially at the low levels. But in the end, money and influence peddling seems to have become commonplace. I think politics in general is negative to humanity and I try to avoid it as much as possible.

I myself think the jury’s out until the Arctic sea ice melts in the summer. Then whatever effects we’ve locked in will be obvious and the trend of the feedbacks will start to emerge (linear, subexponential, exponential, etc.). Right now we seem to be in a phase transition state. I’m looking forward to seeing how humanity deals with the general problems of resource depletion (and yes, I’m aware of what saying that makes me sound like and it doesn’t bother me).

Ed: the key part of your sentence is “may” (what you wrote as “make”). I can agree to that, but choices we make may not matter at all if it’s all consciousness. It may be like waking up from a bad dream.

Kevin, that’s a decent definition, though “evil” is perhaps a strong word to use in all circumstances that situation occurs. Certainly “unethical” will fit. If I steal a dollar from you, knowing it is wrong, it is certainly wrong/unethical IMO but I would not call it “evil.” People also make mistakes and go down the wrong path sometimes and learn from the consequences (sometimes). Are you calling actions evil or people evil or both? I prefer to judge individual actions over individuals themselves.

Assuming the context is NTHE, then the issue becomes (and some of this has been discussed here before) a matter of degree. We’re all culpable in terms of polluting the environment right now and benefitting (or at least living with) from the abuses of the environment made by others. I’d not be in this country had it not been founded via a land grab from the previous inhabitants. We use computing and other technological devices that also contribute to the pollution of this planet. Some of us travel in ways that cause pollution, and so on.

So the moment one becomes aware of the state of affairs and continues BAU, then one is doing evil as per your definition.

Going further (you may have addressed this elsewhere on this forum, but I’ve not read all your posts), do you think that our present politicians and leaders are (doing?) evil because they are responsible for harming the environment while either downplaying it or outright denying it? And going even further, do you think that if there were to be a solution at all to the sorts of problems faced by humanity, it lies in doing far less evil and far more good? That people are lacking an adequate moral education? (I was taught “moral science” by Jesuits.) Not putting words in your mouth, BTW. I’m just seeing where a discussion on the nature of evil would take us.

I would say perhaps the nature of evil is that it is hard to separate good from evil, when in our current state it is all mixed up, and that there’s a continuum of actions, and all one can do is do as much good as possible and do as little evil as possible. I don’t know a single adult personally who can claim that they have never have done anything they knew was wrong.

I like your definition BTW and relating to the study of complex systems, I’ve observed via simulation that when majorities of individual units in such systems perform such actions (i.e., they know it is wrong but do it anyway for some perceived benefit, i.e., in prisoner’s dilemma type situations, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#Real-life_examples ), then such systems stagnate or collapse. It is only when significant majorities act in a cooperative fashion that we can see complex equilibria arising and being maintained indefinitely (and even this occurs only sometimes; there’s some randomness involved though it could be an artifact of such simulations). So my conclusion from that is the evil does not work.

I know this is ‘over the limit’ and I am doing ‘wrong’ even though I know it is ‘wrong’ but this will be my last comment today (NZ being ahead if everyone, and it now being nearly 11pm).

My definition was very basic, and like all such definitions needs refinement or corollaries, depending on the situation/circumstances. Few things are absolutely black or white.

If I have $2 and you have $200 and you steal $1 from me would normally be evil. If I have $1 and you have $!million, and I steal $1 from you that is probably not evil: I may ask how you acquired the $1million and whether you would even miss the $1 I stole.

In England (and elsewhere) it was commonplace for poor people to be severely punished for minor offences whilst wealthy people ‘got away with murder.’

They hang the man and whip the woman
Who steals the goose from the common
And let the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

Selfish-gene theory indicates that when resources are scarce I should take food from you and your progeny to feed myself and my progeny: failing to do so could result in my genetic line coming to an abrupt end, whilst yours might survive. This was taken to the extreme in ‘Greed is good’, in which it was not simply a matter of acquiring sufficient food to prevent starvation but taken the point of exploiting as many people as possible to acquire far more than one could ever eat/wear/use. As we all know, charities work on the basis of the inherent tendency of people to give. Surely, giving handmade gifts at Christmas or any other occasion is good, whereas manipulating the masses to buy stuff they do not need simply in the pursuit of corporate profit or executive bonuses is evil.

The focus of my thinking at the moment is the [national] government, the Labour Party, various minor parties and the NZ Green Party, all of whom know that global extraction of oil has peaked, that the world is in environmental meltdown, and that the financial system is a Ponzi scheme. yet they promote economic growth founded on increased fossil fuels use and resulting in increased emissions. Politicians and bureaucrats lie continuously for personal gain, and in doing so destroy ‘the commons’; surely that is evil. A few months ago John Key declared that fracking was perfectly safe. Of course, like most senior politicians (Obama, Cameron, Harper etc.), John Key’s career is littered with lies. In fact it is a catalogue of lies. I feel fully justified in describing him as evil, since he is a multi-millionaire, and his primary focus is facilitating further looting for himself and his mates, and promoting the interests of global corporations and money-lenders.

There has been considerable focus in the alternative media regarding the propaganda and lies promulgated by the mainstream media. one could easily describe the mainstream media as evil if they are a major contributor to wealth transfer upwards and to planetary destruction; again, lies for short-term gain for the few at the expense of the many.

We have a similar argument with respect to the local and regional councils. The CEOs, the mayor, council officers etc. lie continuously to protect and promote the short-term interests of the moneyed ‘elites’. They know infinite growth is mathematically impossible, that resource limits have been reached, that the environment is collapsing and that everything that matters is getting worse, yet they continue to promote policies that make things worse faster. Is that not evil?

I know this is ground we have gone over many times before but I still have not got to the bottom of it. It would be good to have an answer other than 42 before I die. ( A woman I met a while ago mentioned she found satisfaction in teaching children the meaning of life. I suggested they might get bored with 42 every day. 🙂 )

I see I have many brothers and sister on this blog that are reasonable.

We are all scared shitless and disappointed beyond imagination, esp. those that have a most excellent life at the moment, including myself. This blog is an example of outright panic and well it should be because we understand what is/has or will occur.

Do you remember that James Franco movie where the actor got his hand stuck between some rocks so he cut it off to save himself. I’ve often wondered about that and realized that if I had one single strand of hair stuck between some rocks I would just lay down to die rather than endure the pain of amputating that strand of hair, but the act of sitting down to die would actually pull that hair from my head. Would I get up to walk away? Sheepishly, yep. I will not have a brave battle with cancer, I will shiver like a coward. I will not go gently into the dark night, nor will I rage, I will whimper like and slink off to my destiny.

I have to agree with Kevin Moore. Ever since I have had access to the internet I have been visiting Guy’s blog off and on and in the last 8 months, almost daily. I am sick, also, of these ridiculous questions and the talk of hospice. I originally came to NBL because of the science but it strikes me that the science (apart from a few notable exceptions) is taking a back seat to this concentration on grief and hand wringing (which few people in the world have the luxury of doing) which smacks to me of newage navel gazing ( something that a number of British term “california syndrome”). I’ll probabaly get smacked down for this but there you go.

I agree with Red Fox, all of this emotional pablum is cheap and tawdry. Psycho-babble from Guy’s retinue of sorrowful sirens. Makes me want to drink a few beers and hope for a fast demise, except I can change sites rather quickly when I get that queasy feeling. I suppose intellectual discussion is closed, the human predicament is fait accompli, and now all that remains are feelings. I would advise you don’t step in that emotional doo and go find yourself a hit of dopamine with a little opioid thrown in.

This is a What If parlor game question, and if you refuse to play that is entirely up to you.

But Daniel got to the crux of it: Is it ethical to kill yourself to help another, no matter how briefly?

Total collapse of society will force many people to face that question directly. This site flits about the subject, but I believe that suicide will rapidly become something seen as noble in a rapidly declining world. Everyone is too flush right now to consider suicide seriously, but the question isn’t set in the present, it is set in that dark future when nothing works and roving gangs of unemployed soldier/police are out proving that Might makes Right.

In the movie On the Beach, the government had suicide pills for people. Adults to administer the drug to their children, then to take it themselves as opposed to coming down with radiation sickness and leaving the children to starve to death.

Currently, suicide for men in their 50s is overtaking heart disease as a cause of death. Economic hopelessness playing a part in this, as well as loss of identity as far too many people “are” what employs them. While insurance doesn’t cover suicide, suicide is a hell of lot cheaper than divorce. To a certain extent, I think many of these suicides are men who can think of no other way to help their family, as awful as that sounds.

At any rate, there are some justifications for suicide. If so, then can there be justifications for homicide? Just about anyone will agree that killing a home invader is justified, but does it get easier to kill in a collapsed world? You have to be willing to play with the question.

Kevin wants to discus the nature of evil, but quickly goes to a monetary level. Suicide and homicide are considered evil, but he can’t bring himself to talk about that because it is dumb.

Given the circumstances of collapse, ruin, runaway global warming, I think suicide to help others out would be a given. How that suicide takes shape is the question. Clearly, I would rather disappear instead of blow my brains out in the bath tub, my suicide is not a cry for help or attention after all, it is an exit designed to help people.

Murder is trickier for me. Sure, defending myself and loved ones allows for a “clean” act. But I also could easily see myself in a lynch mob hanging some bankers and oil executives. Suicide as ethical, homicide as hobby? Only time will tell.

Suicide as ethical, homicide as hobby? Might as well because all the good and great commandments mean nothing on a collapsing, vicious capitalist, nuclear war, charcoal, grid meltdown planet.

Clearly, as the end grows undeniably close and ever obvious, nothing matters as the culprits become very clear – many, many if not most individuals will lash out in vengence. Deservedly so. It’s bout time!

I brought this up in my proposed NTHE # 11 thread – that these questions are basicly just click bait, and I intend to focus exclusively on the science because that’s what makes this website unique – there are a million blogs & forums where people are hand wringing & wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Which is why I refuse to participate in these questions..

A bot could post questions like this..

I wouldn’t be surprised to see “what are you listening to right now” as a new thread at this point 😉

‘Kevin wants to discus the nature of evil, but quickly goes to a monetary level.’

The mention of money was simply in response to Ram, as well you know, and has never been the focus of my discussions about the nature of evil, which have always been about greed, deceit, manipulation, exploitation, so-called leaders saying one something publicly and doing to opposite, cartels working to exploit the general populace, charging interest on ‘money’ created out of thin air etc.

In NZ there is currently a discussion about ‘attack politics’ -setting spin-doctors to work to pre-emptively discredit political opponents by generating and promulgating misinformation and outright lies about them, and I have seen ‘attack politics’ emerge on NBL, whereby it is not the topic that is discussed but the person who is commenting that is attacked.

As I write, war crimes are being committed by numerous governments around the world, and the governments of the US, the UK and their allies are planning yet more war crimes. The government of Israel is running a concentration camp in which it tortures and kills people as the occasion suits. And NZ is being run by a gang of criminals whose primary agenda seems to be to lie to everyone so that those who already have far too much wealth can acquire more at the expense of everyone practically else (as seems to be happening everywhere in the ‘developed’ world), and bring in ever more repressive legislation to prevent the ‘peasants’ from having basic freedom to even protest against the exploitation.

My sentiments exactly. I come here for the science and Guy’s excellent summary of it. I am not callous to the grief, hospice and resilience folks that now seem to be dominating, but there are many other places for that. As for the radio show, let’s have on as guests the Sam Caranas that publish in the scientific journals, peer reviewed or not. If you come here, you have accepted NTE of most life on the planet in 20-30 years. Let’s study and understand that process. No intelligent life form has had that opportunity before or will ever again.

I’m hesitant to fire back, because you seem more than capable of shooting yourself in the foot. So, I’ll keep this short.

Can anyone here point to another blog that has been as dedicated to the subject of NTE as NBL? No? And Kevin, is this where I’m suppose to believe you haven’t figure that out yet?

And what is the title of Guy’s upcoming book? Is it “deconstructing the roots of evil”, or “the continued interpretation of the science contributing to NTE”? Why no it’s not.

And these “trite” questions you seem to be growing so tired of, well, they’re coming from all those who read this blog, they’re not coming from me. And how you think I’ve somehow “hijacked” this blog, given all Guy has done is post questions others are apparently curious in discussing, does lead me to think you’ve still got a few things to figure out.

But here’s a little hint, decades of analyzing climate science/data basically got some of “us” to the point of having to “accept the high probability of NTE” around 2010. But if you haven’t figured out that virtually everything “post acceptance” is without a doubt, the greatest emotional/philosophical/spiritual dilemma to ever confront the human race, then whatever story you’ve got repeating in your mind, might still be stuck in a past identity that is no longer relevant to all the unprecedented dire questions now before you.

But with that said, I do very much enjoy reading your posts, and very much appreciate your analytical mind.

Crazy_Inventor says: “there are a million blogs & forums where people are hand wringing & wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Which is why I refuse to participate in these questions..”

Thus participating in this….

Ya know, whining about whining is still whining, right?

What new events in “the science” are you looking for? The atomic weight of carbon is set. The extinction of the planet is worth a couple words, isn’t it? Oh wait, you and Saint Roy don’t play those games, you’re above it all. How wonderfully tedious of you to flaunt your superior ways.

No I’m not ‘participating’, nor ‘whining’, merely making a statement that these kind of questions don’t interest me. Since there’s FUD operatives openly attacking Sam’s data, (which at this point is cutting edge) it might be worthwhile to direct some time & energy away from ’emotional support’ and toward verifying and confirming that data.

so you’re stating, repeatedly, you have no opinion? What a bore you are.
If the question of suicide is “emotional support” then what a bloodless bore you are. Please be as supercilious as possible at all times. People love that. Direct some time and energy shoving your head a wee bit further up your ass.

Some people live in the past, some spend their time worrying about the future. Questions like these encourage and normalize worrying about the future, which is neither here or now.

I have shows to prepare, on current events, current data, measurements samples and findings. Some of this material includes models that make projections about the future, but that’s the extent of it.

More more solid this data is, the less FUD can be used to dismiss it. The people I deal with expect to hear the facts, not my or other’s feelings beliefs or worries. They get plenty of that from all the other stations – fact free opinions that doesn’t tell them truth they need to know. The radio audience is at the beginning of the learning curve, and finding material to air with current solid facts that I don’t have to speak myself (the listeners hear enough of me already) is a great help, it lends credibility to hear other people saying it too..

This website is the best place to obtain such material, it represents the pinnacle of climate knowledge. My listeners are starving for more of the interviews Guy has been doing in the past. Especially the Freak Radio Santa Cruz style as they’re a sister station. None of this emotional support stuff is any help or even makes sense to them. It sounds like a group of people half dead already, or a group of end-of-the-world crazies. Without a solid base of current actual data to underlie it, they can’t relate to it.

I used to be able to go to the interview link and D/L fresh interviews that covered exactly what they need to hear, but now this essential aspect has shrunk to a 1 or 2 minute sound bite. I either have to carry the entire overtime show hoping people are still listening by the end when the stations I’m counter-programming against have already gone back to music 1/2 hour ago, or end up trimming nearly the entire show and filling in the other 28 minutes with my own material.

If there was even a climatologist on, it would be a huge improvement. A detailed rundown of all the feedbacks for example..

The show could have a 1/2 hour break with the second half devoted to those other issues, then stations would have the option of including it or not.

The show as is requires extensive editing (lip smacking, ah’s and um’s) taking 2 to 3 hours, and it still ends up being only a few minutes at the end what entire interviews used to be.

I can re-play the older interviews, but listeners recognise stale material and they tune out.

@crazy_inventor, it sounds like you are taking issue with the current content of this blog because it is not providing fresh-enough material for your own endeavors or preferences.

It seems like what you are asking for is for this blog to be always on the bleeding edge: always discoverING, never having discovered…

We can’t all keep that freshness and newness alive forever, of when the likelihood of NTHE came upon us. That orgasmic moment you seem to want to sell. Like pornography.. the content is always basically the same, but “who wants stale material”?

“Questions like these encourage and normalize worrying about the future, which is neither here or now.”

Au contraire. We would do well to worry about the future, which is here, now. IF ONLY we collectively did so, things might be somewhat different..

Anyway, the future IS here, and now, in every bug you didn’t see squashed on your windshield.

“Some people, like concrete dome advocates, might simply feel overwhelmed and hopeless when it all falls apart and they realize (not imagine) what is involved in surviving. “- AM

There’s an interesting leap of illogic.

The whole point of building Grow Domes is to be able to feed as many people as possible when Industrial Ag fails. Chances are likely that an insufficient number will be built in time to help the majority of the global population.

You try to build enough for your community. If you have insufficient productive capability for the entire community, somebody’s gotta go. I personally have had a nice run walking the earth, so most certainly I would take my Last Kayak Trip Out to Sea so that younger members of the community would have enough. This makes CFS.

Far as Outlanders are concerned, if you have Surplus you take in as many as you can. The larger the community, the better its survival potential. The paradigm is to Save As Many As You Can. When you have reached your carrying capacity, you accept no more, but you offer to assist them in building another such community. Only if they refuse such assistance and choose to Attack you instead do you defend yourself and your community. In such a situation, you take no prisoners.

Your best bet is to build your community in as remote a location as is feasible so you are not confronted with more refugees than you can handle. In a conversation I had with Albert Bates, he estimated The Farm could probably feed 1000 more people, possibly more than that, but that does of course depend on what the climate is doing since they mostly practice outdoor permaculture, not indoor hydroponics and aquaculture. A better location and methodology would be in the Fjords of British Columbia or SE Alaska or NZ or Norway which cannot be reached by any other method than water. Few refugees would find such places, and conflicts of this sort would be minimal.

I potentially reach more people than the total bitcast plays or listens – my signal reaches 50,000 people.

For free, non-commercial, at my own expense. “sell” isn’t quite the word I would use..

Guy already commented about “your show next week, we’re looking forward to listening to it” at which I U/L’ed how the show sounds without any NBL material at all (as a backup fill show) I have nearly 15 GB of material spanning about 10 years to draw from. One would think reaching more listeners would be appreciated especially in such an underutilized media environment (over the air broadcasting)

– I look forward to seeing the list of community stations that carry the show.

RE: It doesn’t matter…I disagree quite a bit. I think that the well being of the vulnerable and those least responsible matters a hell of a lot. Meaning tiny kids. Food animals whose lives are never ending nightmarish horrors. Species who GO. F-KING. EXTINCT. When they are gone, they’re gone. You may rationalize that they’re better off dead, but that’s your voice, not theirs. Until we can figure out how to ask them nicely, it might be better not to go full blown nihilist just yet. If you are nihilisticly inclined towards the days ahead, I’d adopt and hang with the 19th century anti monarchist hardcore Russians like Nachaev: http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Nqv.catechism.thm.htm

1. The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.

2. The revolutionary knows that in the very depths of his being, not only in words but also in deeds, he has broken all the bonds which tie him to the social order and the civilized world with all its laws, moralities, and customs, and with all its generally accepted conventions. He is their implacable enemy, and if he continues to live with them it is only in order to destroy them more speedily.

3. The revolutionary despises all doctrines and refuses to accept the mundane sciences, leaving them for future generations. He knows only one science: the science of destruction. For this reason, but only for this reason, he will study mechanics, physics, chemistry, and perhaps medicine. But all day and all night he studies the vital science of human beings, their characteristics and circumstances, and all the phenomena of the present social order. The object is perpetually the same: the surest and quickest way of destroying the whole filthy order.

4. The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way.

5. The revolutionary is a dedicated man, merciless toward the State and toward the educated classes; and he can expect no mercy from them. Between him and them there exists, declared or concealed, a relentless and irreconcilable war to the death.

6. Tyrannical toward himself, he must be tyrannical toward others. All the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship, gratitude, and even honor, must be suppressed in him… For him, there exists only one pleasure, on consolation, one reward, one satisfaction – the success of the revolution. Night and day he must have but one thought, one aim – merciless destruction. Striving cold-bloodedly and indefatigably toward this end, he must be prepared to destroy himself and to destroy with his own hands everything that stands in the path of the revolution.

7. The nature of the true revolutionary excludes all sentimentality, romanticism, infatuation, and exaltation.

…

13. The revolutionary enters the world of the State, of the privileged classes, of the so-called civilization, and he lives in this world only for the purpose of bringing about its speedy and total destruction.

…

23. By a revolution, the Society does not mean an orderly revolt according to the classic western model – a revolt which always stops short of attacking the rights of property and the traditional social systems of so-called civilization and morality. Until now, such a revolution has always limited itself to the overthrow of one political form in order to replace it by another, thereby attempting to bring about a so-called revolutionary state. The only form of revolution beneficial to the people is one which destroys the entire State to the roots and exterminated all the state traditions, institutions, and classes in Russia.

24. With this end in view, the Society therefore refuses to impose any new organization from above. Any future organization will doubtless work its way through the movement and life of the people; but this is a matter for future generations to decide. Our task is terrible, total, universal, and merciless destruction.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Got it? Now quit your kvetching and get out there and start raising holy hell.

I can’t think of a single fuzzy happy bear here. The solution currently NOT being discussed is suicide and/or murder.

I suspect suicide is too remote, too taboo, too icky to be taken as a serious topic, which is a shame since suicide may very well become the best option for everyone here.

Instead we get Crazy_Inventor’s endless self-promotion leading me to believe that if he is not RE under another name, he may as well be. Radio to the rescue! Oh, the hours and dedication! The selfless sacrifice to keep the public, or at least 50,000 of them, dying to hear the next brilliant broadcast. Sheesh. The halo workshop is certainly busy these days.

But what about The Science?!? You mean the release of methane, the melting ice caps, the forest die off, the collapsing biosphere and the drought in California? Science is well and good, but human reactions to it are what matters. If the science is pointing towards human extinction by 2030, if not sooner, then figuring out what that means at a human level is worth considering. Being prematurely snuffed out is enough to piss off anyone. Unless of course, one’s life is so devoid of meaning in the first place, losing it is no big deal.

When I see the landing page I get a flashback, a cross between woodstock and jonestown:

“ladies and gentlemen an announcement

DO NOT DRINK THE BROWN FLAVORAIDE, it’s good.

I repeat DO NOT DRINK THE BROWN FLAVORAIDE, it’s good. ”

We should do a special show:

“The wailing wall hour with the NBL heartblead bloggers”

@ Grant

‘promotion’ implies audience. There is no bitcast to listen to, it’s strictly an on-air local community affair.

I don’t know if you’ve actually listened to Guy & Mike’s show, but they say repeatedly to ‘like’ them and invite comments and other feedback, even just criticism, because “it helps us improve the show”, and they both take abundant interest in the number of plays or downloads, and their show has a brand – the NBL show.

I have no brand, don’t like to talk and don’t even consider myself a DJ, host or ‘radio personality’, have no feedback whatsoever on the number of listeners, there’s no call-in, no reply form, no website, no social media, no likes – nothing.

It’s simply called the very generic term ‘community affairs’

Guy & Mike call on listeners to spread the word, to share the show, to tell more people about it..

My effort is strictly to put THEIR voices on the air, not mine.

Occasionally I make me talking available for doubting Thomases, 14 months ago was the last time I did so:

I am Shawnee, there used to be 100 million of us and we lived as one with nature for thousands of generations.

Then the white men came. Now we’re 96 % extinct. And now white men are telling the 4 % of us left, to kill ourselves as a ‘solution’ to a problem they created with their fire sticks, fire water and machines.

The only Homo sapiens normally completely bereft of adult male facial hair are full-blooded Native Americans / First Nations. That’s why there are hardly any pictures of Native Americans with beards, moustaches or whiskers. If they were full-blooded, it’s not that they were clean-shaven: in fact they never did shave.

Other races can have adult males without facial hair when they have liver cirrhosis, alcoholic or otherwise. One of the normal functions of the liver is to breakdown female hormones, both in females and the small amounts normally produced in males. With disruption of liver function in cirrhosis, this breakdown does not occur, and in males the accumulation of female hormones suppresses the production of male hormones.

I learnt early on that if an adult male does not have facial hair, it’s probably OK if he’s a Native American; otherwise it is a flag for liver disease.

..and my other thought about it is, I bet reverse engineer laughs his ass off over it – thinks it drives more click bait to his site, or validates his own doom cult strawman anti-science/reality stance..

also, I checked out infanttyrone after that snide remark, and noticed a few things:

“all’a y’all chromatic (thermo)dynamic fanatics migrate this to the Forum, or out back, or just summers else…I’ma ’bout ready to strip a gear on my only scrolling mouse, y’know?”

— barely readable right?

but look here:

“there is this really cool computer gear available called a scrolling mouse. I use it with many comments here, either when I know I’m not likely to appreciate/understand something that’s way outside my level of scientific capability”

The Southern dialect passage you refer to is barely readable?
I’m no Faulkner, but I’ve spent some time in the South and wrote that
with the ear of a particular Southern reader (of this blog) in mind.
I doubt anyone here had much difficulty with it, but if they did,
it really wasn’t written that way for them (or for you).
You invented a snideness that wasn’t there.
I’m guessing I won’t have to worry about you needling me for more free content.

As to Mr. Berman, I wonder if he knows that he’s ‘in bed’ with that site.
He certainly hasn’t mentioned it in any of the articles or comments that I’ve read.
Any problems you have with the Professor should be directed to his site.
And unless your definition of guru is loose enough to cover (on a part-time basis) older or younger siblings who occasionally offer advice worth acting on, then you’re probably inventing something there too.

Good job tracking me down on the 4th page of Google hits. Persistence paid off. In case you were wondering, none of the hits preceding the NBL comment have anything to do with me. I don’t use caps and I don’t separate the two words. If I ever need help tracking down someone or something and my go-to Private Eye, Doc Sportello, is unavailable, then there is every chance that in all probability you are the very type of guy I’ll be wanting, at some time or another, to contact telephonically. In the meantime, knock ’em dead with the radio show.

Especially the last line about “the bugs not getting squashed on your windscreen anymore”.

This is a profound observation of something that’s happening ALL over the world. Remember, we are ONE world. It’s the biosphere, our life support that’s dying, and the lack of squashed bugs are a symbol for that. Please contemplate that. This is what this blog is all about.

Or maybe, as all blogs comments everywhere are led and dominated by men, is it OK to ignore women’s comments? I hope you don’t think like that. Because otherwise, everything just becomes a pissing contest, and for that, as you well know, women are not anatomically equipped.

“Would you kill yourself in order to help other people survive, even though that survival was highly unlikely, or would you choose to stay alive no matter what, even if that meant killing someone else and watching those you love perish in front of you?”

First, I’d like to go on record as saying that any sincerely asked question is worth discussing on its own merits, whether I think it’s the best question ever conceived, or whether I think it’s stupid and contrived. I don’t know who asked the question, but I’m willing to frame a response. If I weren’t, I would not. The option of not commenting is sometimes the best response. FWIW.

So:

“Would you kill yourself in order to help other people survive.”

I can’t come up with many scenarios where this is the way I’d go. It seems unlikely, and it also seems to me that it would an eventuality that would only come up in the last days of some very desperate circumstances, and that the real value to anyone else would be very minimal.

How about that?

Generally, I think I possess valuable knowledge and abilities that would benefit others more by my being alive than dead. At least until the very end days of starvation. At that point, I might consider giving my last food to a loved one, and starving. Starving is not the worst way to die, and has been the chosen path out of here by some people whom I admire, like Scott Nearing.

“would you choose to stay alive no matter what, even if that meant killing someone else and watching those you love perish in front of you?”

I think I have enough self-control to not kill other people in order to prolong my own existence. And I certainly don’t view “staying alive no matter what” as any kind of positive behavior.

So,no. I won’t ever be a reiver or a zombie or a cannibal, or any other kind of degenerate subhuman. I’m on a higher path than that in this incarnation.